I recently received some very good news regarding exhibition opportunities and it’s made me feel incredibly productive in the studio. I got into a much cuvited gallery in the Lehigh Valley called The Bethlehem House Gallery, for their “Winter Show” in late January. I also got into a show at a gallery in Lebanon, Pa for early February as well. Finally, my show in Fredericksburg, Va, “Mid-Atlantic Painting 2016”, starts in January; so I will have 3 shows up at once in January and February, well on my way to 4 shows a year which is my goal. Now I just need to get into a major commercial gallery in New York, but that’s a life time dream. Because of all this activity I’ve been busy framing works and finishing up on a small drawing series – staying busy and productive, just the way I like it. Over the last two weeks I framed 3 works and completed a set of 8 drawings I call “Puppet Pal Friends Say Our and Are”.
I finished this new drawing series in lightening time, inspired by the gallery news and my mother’s memoirs, which I went through recently. My mom lived a hard life with lots of family bitterness. Her writing style sometimes reflected this feeling with long loquacious passages full of emotion. Very much like mine, in the long pregnant passages area that is. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Anyway she used to confuse the words “our” and “are” a lot, often transposing the words. I tried to correct as many of the instances as possible when she asked me to edit a small section of her story I had published in a college magazine some 20 years ago now. But in that small memoir excerpt and in her larger work she every once in a while shifted meanings of passages with this our are switch, changing them so that they made more sense transposed then in their correct order. I’ll find an instance of this I guess motif sometime and blog about it. It funny once you read it. Anyway I did an 8 part drawing series on this literary flurish of hers, and you can see them all below. Until next time happy holidays!
Puppet Pal Friends Say Our and Are 1-8, respectively
Anthony Smith Jr. 